The Government must realign emergency funding to top up schools' contributions to teachers' pensions, leaders have said, amid warnings schools may have to make cuts due to funding shortfalls.
Last year the government announced that employer contributions to the teachers' pension scheme would rise by more than 20%, from 23.6% to 28.6% in April this year.
Ministers said £1.1 billion in additional funding would be used to cover the increase in state schools.
but school week In March, some schools said they feared their grant allocation would fall short despite the government promising to fully fund them.
Today the general secretaries of the ASCL and NAHT school leadership unions wrote to Education Secretary Gillian Keegan saying they were “very concerned” about the reported shortfall.
The grant is calculated based on funding rates for pupils of different age groups, with an additional £65 to £100 provided for each pupil eligible for free school meals.
In a speech last March, leaders said they believed the weighting of free school meals was skewing allocations to favor more deprived schools.
Schools caught in 'spiral cut'
Pepe Di’Iasio and Paul Whiteman wrote in their letter that the school “is currently in decline due to lack of funding and cuts.
“We are concerned that despite the best efforts of school and college leaders to minimize the impact on students and students, difficulties in education provision are inevitable.”
Full school level allocations for 2024-25 have not yet been published, but the Department for Education has provided an online calculator tool to help schools and trusts calculate how much they will receive.
Based on the calculator, union leaders said, “We have heard from many members that there is a shortage. This is often on a significant scale.”
“Cases across the industry involve amounts in excess of £70,000. “For special schools where higher staff ratios are required, this is likely to be even more practical.”
They said: “We are very concerned about the impact these shortfalls will have, given that they are occurring in the context of significant cost pressures in schools.”
“This includes a nationally agreed pay rise for support staff for 2023-24, which schools do not have the funding to provide, and a lack of funding for special educational needs provisions.
“As a result, many schools are running annual deficits and will need to make further cuts to balance their budgets in coming years.”
Re-establishment of ‘Supplementary Fund’
Both unions said they raised the issue with Keegan and officials and were told to “encourage our members to contact the department directly with information about the shortfalls they are experiencing.”
However, while this is a “helpful measure, it does not seem to be the solution to this problem.”
When grants were made available to cover increased employer contributions in 2019, the DfE “also provided the option for schools to apply for top-up funding”.
Under withdrawn government guidance, schools would qualify if their grant allocation was more than 0.05% short of the actual increase in pension costs in the overall budget over the period.
“This has been a very welcome solution and we now urge the Department to introduce this option with: [2023-24 pension grant]It’s an urgent issue,” Di’Iasio and Whiteman said.
The impact of pension increases is “of course just one example of the ongoing budgetary pressures the sector is experiencing”.
“We ask the Treasury and Cabinet to continue to highlight the seriousness of the financial situation facing schools, trusts and universities and the need for additional funding as a matter of urgency.”